Scope Creep

We often experience scope creep at my office unfortunately. Tasks always start with the idea that things will go smoothly but sure enough it only takes hours to notice the scope creep. My section is tasked with converting classroom materials into a web format. The assignment tasks are given to my team with the *assumption” that the lesson plan was given to the web development team in perfect order meaning the assumption is that the materials that are given is current and up to date. We often find out this is far from reality. When deadlines are busted or requested for an extension lots of finger pointing occurs and we look incompetent. The skills are in place, the group lacks direction from the PM.

 

The SOW is verbally relayed, the deliverables are announced as the project deadline and that is our target. Converting the classroom material into an online module takes time, skill, and effort but the project manager often refers to it as just ‘slap it onto the web’ and minimizes our efforts when it comes to coding and searching material to enhance the product (like designing educational gaming to reinforce the content). There is no documentation that keeps the team on task or requires a signature to maintain a realistic SOW. 

"Controlling the scope of project begins before the first line of code is written. Every development effort should have a corresponding project plan or project agreement, regardless of the situation. To successfully control the scope of your project:

1. Be sure you thoroughly understand the project vision.
2. Understand your priorities and the priorities of the project drivers.
3. Define your deliverables and have them approved by the project drivers.
4. Break the approved deliverables into actual work requirements.
5. Break the project down into major and minor milestones and complete a generous project schedule to be approved by the project drivers.
6. Once a schedule has been created, assign resources and determine your critical path using a PERT Chart or Work Breakdown Structure.
7. Expect that there will be scope creep. Implement Change Order forms early and educate the project drivers on your processes. A Change Order form will allow you to perform a cost-benefit analysis before scheduling changes requested by the project drivers". (Doll, 2001)

References:

Doll, Shelley, (2001) Seven steps for avoiding scope creep: http://www.techrepublic.com/article/seven-steps-for-avoiding-scope-creep/1045555

Greer, M. (2010). The project management minimalist: Just enough PM to rock your projects! (Laureate custom ed.). Baltimore: Laureate Education, Inc.

Portny, S. E., Mantel, S. J., Meredith, J. R., Shafer, S. M., & Sutton, M. M. (2008). Project management: Planning, scheduling, and controlling projects. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Blog Assignment #2: Communicating Effectively

Ahh hahahahah I smiled really big at the end of the video portion of our assignment, after Jane delivers the face to face message the frame freezes on her and a big cheese smile remains, too funny.

For this week’s assignment a single message was delivered via three different modalities: as written text, as an audio file (voicemail), and as a video (face to face transaction). I am figuring this assignment to be highly subjective as it is dependent on the 'listener' or 'receiver of the message' to extract the information relayed and that message may be interpreted differently,  due to an almost endless list of factors, I expect to read various perceptions as to which form of delivery was the most effective. This week I am curious to review colleague’s postings to gauge what the general consensus was overall. 

Starting with the email message delivery, when reading an email, there is no way to ‘hear’ tone of the speaker via a text based format, so it is up to the person reading the message to make certain assumptions and interpretations about that message. When I read the written text modality, I sensed the urgency of the message via this email, more so than from Jane's face to face delivery (which I interpreted as non professional, way too nice, somewhat wishy-washy, and overall found her to be a non-confident person in a business environment). I would have liked to “hear” Jane as stronger employee with a straightforward professional projection. Jane's message was important, so even though I was not able to “hear” her tone via the email, I perceived a higher sense of urgency via the email message. All this could be because I started with the email modality, not sure if I would have started with her face to face video if I would feel the same way because after seeing her and hearing her, you get a sense of her personality and when you know people’s personality, reading a message from them you get their style when reading the message. In this case, I did start with the email message initially over the others so as ‘Mark’, a co-worker of Jane's, I would have immediately followed up with Jane via an email correspondence verse potentially waiting till the end of the day to send her the request after interacting with her face to face.

I understand that an email message will be more difficult to truly feel the meaning of the message because it is text and text format has no ‘sense’ (unless you write in all caps) but still for me personally if I were to categorize all modalities I would classify Jane's email as the most urgent, followed up with her voicemail message, and finally the one that demonstrated the least urgency to me was her face to face delivery. In conclusion in regards to the email transaction, after reading this email message, and because I felt the sense of urgency, I would response immediately with a follow-up on the status of the report or I forward her the report if it was ready to be delivered. 

Voicemail messaging, I am not a fan of VM in business or personal. Like many others out there in the world, I have two VM systems (business and personal). With my personal account, I rarely hear the voice messages from regular callers, it is a bad habit and probably rude but I would prefer if you call (do not leave a VM) follow up with a text message stating what you need or wishing to relay or just call back. Keep it quick and simple. I will listen to a VM from an unknown / unrecognized number.

Business environment is another story completely, that is a professional area and employee's need to conduct themselves to higher standards in the workplace. As a PM, I would probably not leave a voice mail because I would have no idea if the person I am trying to contact ever heard my VM or not and I do not like to play the guessing game so I would follow up with another modality. An email I can track by sending a read receipt and a face to face exchange I know the message was received so overall I stay away from voice messages.

Jane’s voice delivery was clear, concise, and straightforward but I feel like her message was easily forgotten, I would not have given Jane the same level of response as I applied towards the email correspondence.

 

 

BoOoOoOoOoOoO!!!! She was so casual and laid back, even somewhat apologetic that I hardly take her seriously as a professional. She is relaying an extremely important message but the words of her message did not match her tone. Her delivery was more of a ‘do me a favor, if can or you have time later’ type of message. Not professional at all. I would have appreciated a straightforward comment from Jane in a firm but professionally manner, stating 'I need to know the ETA of the report and I need it ASAP – get back with me 5 minutes ago, do NOT leave today without either letting me know what the status is or sending me the report, are we tracking?’

What is goofy about this scenario is face-to-face communication is often considered the most effective way to communicate, yet I find that the email message to me was interpreted the most professional and I clearly understood the importance of the message.  

There is no doubt that effective communication takes practice and skill. “The ability to communicate well, both orally and in writing is a critical skill for project managers” (Portny et al., 2008, p.357). Effective communication reduces misunderstandings and allows for mutual understanding (People-communicating, 2010).

Overall this exercise was a great lesson for it demonstrates that as a project manager we must carefully consider the message we need to  communicate and figure out the best way to do it to ensure a favorable outcome.

References:
Portny, S. E., Mantel, S. J., Meredith, J. R., Shafer, S. M., Sutton, M. M., & Kramer, B. E. (2008). Project management: Planning, scheduling, and controlling projects. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc

People-communicating (2010). Why Effective Communication is Important. Retrieved January 19, 2012 from:http://www.people-communicating.com/why-effective-communication-is-important.html

Stolovich (n.d.), Communicating with Stakeholders [Video]. Laureate Education

Learning from a Project “Post-mortem”

The Project: Implementing a Learning Management System (LMS)

One way to learn best practices and avoid mistakes within a future project is to review the results and activities from a project that has been completed in the past. For this assignment and in utilizing the process called project post-mortem, I recall a task that I wanted to soon forget. Breathing life back into this buried project in an effort to extract a valuable lesson for future projects, is a task my company was given to handle, which was to customize and populate a LMS with student and staff information, upload course deliverables for immediate access, and ensure tracking was accomplished when students were logged in. One of my first assignments was to PM/develop, and populate courseware to the Meridian Learning Management System which was a software interface that was meant to install on a local network that would track students according to degree plan, capture student information, and follow student progress from registration to completion. The project deliverables needed to include:

• Customize the Meridian LMS software to look and feel our corporate image/style
• Upload all instructional modules into the LMS
• Incorporate a web interface / login for staff and students
• Adjust permission levels for all administrators, instructors, and students
• Track all personnel when logged into LMS

I was the PM with the responsibility to plan, organize, and coordinate the project to ensure it was working and tracking properly. Mistake #1 (of several), I did not accomplish a statement of work (SOW), without doing a SOW and talking to key personnel such as the IT department (who would be able to determine early in the project that the servers were not going to be able to handle the Meridian LMS due to security issues and permission constraints, but without seeking out these key players or doing an SOW which maybe raising issues under the risks category - this task was dead in the water before even starting). I believe now a SOW would have given us an idea of this potential risk or at least have addressed all the key players that would have been involved.

There were several contributions to this projects failure. A critical aspect was to not include all key players in which the task needed its support. In this case the IT department is one of the most important departments to include in the planning process. A project could be planned based on current technologies, but the organization’s technological infrastructure may not be able to handle the planned technologies. As Portny, Mantel, Meredith, Shafer, Sutton, and Kramer, (2008), state “New technologies and materials become available or new requirements and needs become apparent during a project; any of these can lead to changed projects” (pg. 346). This information became a real turning point for our project. We utilized a new technology that our IT department was unable to support. We were all extremely unclear on how the IT department could stop us in our tracks, but this “scope creep” could have been prevented if the right people were involved or consulted. We had not thought of the IT department during this project, but later recognized they can be an important part of the team. Communication is definitely a critical component for keeping everyone on target and reducing the possibility of failure. Portny et al., (2008) noted a project goes through several phases. They include: conceive, define, start, perform, and close. In this case because we were deficient in these phases and our project failed.

Greer (2010) noted it is important to be clear about the project concept to get the support from key people in your organization. We were overeager and overconfident that this was going to be a smooth and rather ‘easy’ project that we failed to consult with the key players that in turn would advise and help us with this project. If we were to have developed a SOW or a Project Charter (Portny, et al., 2008) that formally launched and acknowledged the existence of the project it may have saved three months of development time, man power, funds, and resources. By the time the project was at the stage that several fixes could be implemented to accommodate and be successful, the stakeholders stripped the task from us [the contractor] and requested to implement a different interface that could accomplish a similar task without the use of Meridian LMS on the local area network. The stakeholders were displeased with the project direction and progression so our project was abandoned, we were stripped from the task and lost all the funds that were granted, along with a break in relationship as we were viewed as incompetent therefore lost out on future contracts.

Some positives  

The process was an eye opener for the organization. There were some very real lessons learned from this failure and that is how imperative the initial planning, incorporating the right people to support the project, scheduling, and defining the project scope, these aspects would have made a significant difference in the outcome of this failed project. Portny, et al., (2008) lead us to insights when they discuss the three basic responsibilities of project management which are:

• Planning • Organizing • Controlling

These attributes in conjunction are the keys to a success project plan. By specifying results to be achieved, determining schedules, estimating resources required, organizing includes defining people’s roles and responsibilities, reconfirming people’s expected performance, monitoring actions and results, addressing problems encountered, and sharing information with interested people (Portny, Mantel, Meredith, Shafer, Sutton, & Kramer, 2008) success will be achieved. Our team lacked knowledge on how to make this project a success from the very start in the future involving critical key players and understanding the political nature of any project will be first on the list. Our team thankfully recovered from this but it did take time, as we proceeded very cautiously and cover ourselves more now.

References:

Greer, M. (2010). The project management minimalist: Just enough PM to rock your projects! (Laureate custom ed.). Baltimore: Laureate Education, Inc.

Portny, S., Mantel, S., Meredith, J., Shafer, S., Sutton, M., & Kramer, B. (2008). Project Management planning, scheduling and controlling projects. Hoboken. NJ:John Wiley and Sons, Inc.



PM Course

I have been in the ID&T field for exactly one year. I have learned so much from each class and fellow students who have shared much of their experiences in the field – I have leaned on all of you tremendously and I want to acknowledge those for the support, much appreciated!

My prior field of study and professional experience was in aerospace science and engineering, which I worked for 9 years before making a radical move and career change (my significant other was transferred to West Texas and I followed, it still is a huge culture shock for me to adjust even after a year's time but luckily I was able to gain employment immediately even though I had no prior experience in the ID&T field and am grateful they took a chance on me – though I miss my prior job and location tremendously my focus has transitioned to becoming proficient in understanding and handling ID&T materials.

The upcoming eight weeks in class should be not be any different as I am sure I will learn a great deal from the course and colleagues, looking forward to it everyone!